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History

Image: staff at work.

1938

construction work began.

27-AUG-1939

War Rooms became fully operational.

16-AUG-1945

War Rooms abandoned with the end of the war.

1948

an announcement in the Parliament ensured their preservation as an historic site. Restricted access.

1981

the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, decided that the site should be made more easily accessible that its history became more widely known.

1981-1984

preservation and restoration by the Imperial War Museum and the Department of the Environment.

11-FEB-2005

Churchill Museum opened at the Cabinet War Rooms site.

Description

Image: the concrete basement of Whitehall indicates the location of the bunker.

Right in the middle of London, between Parliament Square and Trafalgar square is
the location of a most important historic subterranea.
At the end of King Charles Street some steps lead down to the Cabinet War
Rooms.
A bunker with 19 rooms, only a few meters below surface was the most important
center of British defense during World War II.
Churchill's underground wartime headquarters was the
place where the British War Cabinett and the chiefs of staff directed the
British war machinery.

Image: portrait of Winston Churchill in the entrance.

The bunker is restored to the state it had 1945, and shows numerous interesting
details from this time.
There is for example the telephone, Churchill used to
talk to President Roosevelt.
The Conference Room, Map Room and Churchill's bedroo
are well preserved.

Image: wooden construction to support the ceiling, especially in case of a collapse of the building above during an air raid.

The bunker was originally a normal cellar.
As the ground falls towards St. James' Park, the cellar is half above ground at
this side, and the stairs from the door in the center of the facade goes right
through the cellar at this point.
When the cellar was transformed into a bunker, the ceilings were inforced by
concrete and supported by wooden beams.
The above ground wall was also covered with concrete from the outside and the
inside, and the weakest point below the stair was filled completely with
concrete.

The bunker was equipped with all kind of communication technology.
There were telephones, direct lines to the other allies, scrambled phones,
map rooms for strategic planning and much more.
Many people lived in the bunker, although Churchill himself preferred to live
in his flat above.
When the bombs or German V2 rockets were falling on London, he often observed it
from the roof of the building instead of hiding inside the bunker.
However, the building was never hit and the bunker never really needed.

A few years ago the Churchill Museum was built in a section of the huge
cellar.
It is now part of the Cabinet War Rooms.
It is more or less a huge hall, which is full with memorabilia and dozens of
interactive multimedia gadgets.
Although generally of more interest to the younge generation, a few of them are
such an impressive source of information, it is possible to spend all day in the
museum.
Some items of Churchill are on display, like the pistol he owned during the
second Anglo-Boer war in 1899, which he attended the as a war correspondent.
Of course there are soe of his pictures, he was a prolific painter.
And obviously there is one of the cigars he was famous for.
He started smoking in 1895 when he travelled to Cuba to observe the Spanish
battles against Cuban guerrillas.
He smoked eight of them daily, but he had to relight them frequently, as they
went out all the time.